The pain Anne Main felt that night was only discomfort, not agony. Imagine her shock when her cardiologist at St. Boniface Hospital later told her having it checked out had saved her life.
One frigid night in February of 2023, Main felt pain in her chest unlike anything she had ever felt before. It was unusual and persistent but not excruciating.
She finished up, went home, and told her husband Bob something felt wrong. He brought her water and a heated wheat bag.
“We decided I should go to the Russell Health Centre, but I admit vanity kicked in first. I wanted to shower, thinking I might not get a chance to later,” Main remembered. She took an Aspirin then, and the pain went away. She told Bob they could call it off.
Main was uneasy, but still went to bed, checking in with herself overnight. “It didn’t make sense. I eat carefully, never smoke, and don’t drink a lot. I take aqua fitness classes regularly,” she said.
The next day, she felt well enough to go to work in the office at Major Pratt School in Russell. It was another freezing morning; she wondered if the weather was all that had been bothering her. However, when she jogged toward the door to the school Main’s chest pain returned.
She went straight to the Russell Health Centre down the road. When the doctor finally came into her hospital room he told Main she’d had a mild heart attack. She was shocked.
The doctor booked her for an angiogram and surgery at St. Boniface Hospital, adding her to nearly 47,000 patient visits made to the Hospital’s Cardiac Sciences program each year, many of whom arrive via ambulance from locations across Manitoba.
“When we arrived at the Hospital, my care team there was waiting for me! I felt so cared for, and they showed me such kindness,” Main said.
Her angiogram showed the blockages in her coronary arteries were worse than expected. Her St. B cardiologist, Dr. Arjun Gupta, put in five stents to unblock them, threading each from her wrist and up her arm to her heart.
“My sister had a heart attack the month before. She got one stent at that time. So, you can imagine how shocked I was when Dr. Gupta told me he had put in five! I couldn’t believe my ears,” she said.
“Dr. Gupta told me, ‘Anne, you are so lucky that you had pain and came to see us at St. B.’ He had put three of the five stents into my main coronary artery. If it had become fully blocked, well, they would call that kind of heart attack the widow maker. It took my breath away. I’ve had friends who have died. Could I have been next?”
Main says what scared her the most was that there were no warning signs. She later learned that women can even experience a heart attack without chest pain, as she almost did.
Today, Main is retired, enjoying her life with Bob and spending time with her 10, going on 11, grandkids, thanks to expert care at St. B.
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